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Abstract
Weather-related disasters continued to batter the United States and other countries this year, with heat and rainfall setting records across the globe. In August, the leading international body studying climate change issued its strongest warning yet that the world is running out of time to avoid even more catastrophic droughts, storms, heat waves, wildfires and floods, even as new research confirms that emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases from the burning of fossil fuels are to blame. President Biden is acting on several fronts to shift the country away from those fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — and is prodding other countries to do the same ahead of a critical international climate conference beginning Oct. 31, but a rift within his own party has stalled his climate agenda in Congress.